


our familiar hesitation

by MadHattie



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Fic, I can't believe these dorks are in love, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 16:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13955727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHattie/pseuds/MadHattie
Summary: 5 times Jace and Addax almost realized that they were in love (+1 time they did)





	our familiar hesitation

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my docs for more than a month because I forgot that it existed.  
> Thanks to Air for beta reading!

(1)

 

Peace looms over the spaceport, too huge to fit inside the building, barely small enough to stand outside without throwing the city around it into shadow. Its sharp, humanoid figure and broad metal wings make it look like a guardian angel from an old Earth painting; a protector for those below.

 

Jace has seen a Divine before, but only once, on the battlefield. High above in the surface of a planet he doesn’t even remember the name of, with a few hundred other ships on all sides, he had seen a looming form that moved like humans would if they could be machines. In the time it took for his sensors to focus on the shape an entire squadron was gone, and at least three commanders were screaming over the comms to retreat.

 

Without the barrier of atmosphere, this one seems to speak to him. He feels it assert its will without words, telling him all the things that peace could be. A planet full of slow rivers. A breeze blowing through wind chimes to produce a tinkling song. Machines working in a steady rhythm. Darkness. Cold. Nothing.

 

“Jace Rethal?”

The words are quiet, the voice measured and even, but Jace jerks his head forward anyway, flinching out of his daydream.

 

The voice belongs to the man walking down the spaceport pathway with his head held high and his shoulders back. He seems like he should be Jace’s age, but there are deep stress lines carved into the corners of his eyes, and his tight military haircut reveals streaks of premature gray in his plum-colored hair.

 

“Candidate Addax, of Peace.” The man holds his hand out stiffly and waits, like he’s only just heard of this thing called a handshake. “I’m looking forward to working with you on this mission.”

 

As mechanical as he acts, he seems genuine. Jace is good at reading people- it’s how he’s gotten this far without being killed. Addax gives off the air of a veteran, but he doesn’t feel dangerous. Instead he feels worn, like he’s steady and comfortable in his position even when he’s uncomfortable in day-to-day situations. Which he seems to be, judging by the way the muscles in his neck are tensed as tight as a guitar string. As a Candidate, Addax probably went straight from the cradle to the cockpit, so it makes sense that he isn’t all that practiced at introducing himself to people like this.

 

“Nice to meet you, Candidate Addax.” Jace grasps his hand and tries to be the warm, welcoming person that Tea always says he is. “I wish we didn’t have to meet in these circumstances, but hopefully we’ll both make it through intact enough that we can get drinks afterwards.”  _ Nono, too warm. Fuck. Nice going dumbass, flirting with a guy you just met and probably making him more uncomfortable than he already was to begin with. _

 

Jace lets his hand drop to his side, wiggling his fingers to try to get the nervous energy out. “Uh…”

 

“Just the pilots I wanted to see!” The voice echoes down the corridor, Apostalisian accent amplifying with volume. “Well, almost all of the pilots. Have either of you seen Orth?”

 

The Apostalisian is slim, with teal scales running up their neck and a long braid hung over their shoulder. Their bright yellow eyes gleam as they smile and place a hand on both of the pilots’ shoulders. “Thank you both for helping me on this mission. Without the forces of both Oricon and the Diaspora, I don’t think there’s much that my little ship of traitors could do to stop that weapon from being built.”

 

“Um.” Addax shifts uncomfortably under the Apostalisian’s grasp.

 

“Oh, sorry.” They step back and take a sweeping bow. “Sokrates Nikon Artemisios, formerly of House Pelagios, at your service. I already knew you two from reports, and I assumed that I was one of the cool guys featured in reports too.” They bounced back on their heels. “So, either of you guys know where Orth is? I need to go over some of the final plans for the manifest before we leave.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Jace says with an uneasy smile. Addax simply shakes his head.

 

“Oh well, I’ll find him eventually. They give a lazy salute. “Nice to meet you two! I’ll see you later!”

 

They turn on a heel, flipping their braid over their shoulder, and disappear from sight.

 

As soon as they are out of sight something breaks, like a dam bursting under the weight of the water it holds back. Addax starts a laugh that devolves into a fit of giggles. Jace can’t help but join in, laughing as Addax puts a hand on his shoulder to support himself as he collapses inward.

 

“What was that?” Jace wheezes. “I thought they were here to like, reprimand us or kill us or something! What kind of scion acts like that?”

 

“An exiled one, apparently.” Addax smiles. “Are you sure you didn’t want to go for that drink now? Because I feel like I could use a drink after that.”

 

“I’m with you on that one,” Jace says, and he tries not to focus on the way Addax’s hand lingers on his shoulder.

 

 

(2)

 

He’s standing there like an image in a history book- sharp, calm, beautiful; a king watching over his subjects. The people below probably don’t even know he’s watching, but to Addax his presence is clear.

 

Peace’s visual sensors sharpen and focus without him asking them to, picking up on stray hairs and minute wrinkles in his flight suit from high in the atmosphere. Jace looks frustrated, or no, no that’s not it. He looks determined. Standing there above those refugees, the people they’re trying to save, Jace looks like he’s doing calculations to see how they can fit every last one aboard.

 

Addax watches Jace as he brings a hand up to the communicator at his collar, and almost jumps when his own communicator rings. Peace picks it up for him.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Addax,” Addax can see his mouth move at the same time his voice enters his ears, but there’s a disconnect, eerie and mechanical. “I really appreciate you doing security patrols, but I think that you’re scaring people. This planet was attacked not too long ago, and I know that Peace doesn’t look anything like an Apostalisian warship, but the sight of any kind of big ship in the atmosphere is enough to make some of them nervous.”

 

“So do you think I should just go back up with the other ships?” Peace protests at the notion, jolting a spark of unease through Addax’s thoughts. Peace rarely agrees with what Jace says, to the point where Addax thinks it might just be on principle.

 

“Nah, I think that as long as you’re high enough up in the atmosphere they won’t be able to see you, and it won’t be a big deal. ‘Sides, I’d much rather have you here keeping an eye on things than up there listening to Orth and Tea and Natalya argue about how many people we can bring with us.”

 

Addax hopes Jace doesn’t know that he can see his face, because the smile that Jace makes in his assumed privacy is brilliant, all warmth and fondness. He wonders what his own smile looks like when he listens.

 

 

(3)

 

“Addax, I know that Ibex is a candidate, and that you want to have faith in him, but someone who uses refugees as a bargaining chip can’t be trusted.”

 

“It’s not..” Addax hesitates, stutters, fidgets. He only does that when he’s really conflicted about something, Jace has noticed. Most of the time he’s trained himself to be still and orderly, the perfect soldier. “Ibex has always been ambitious, but I can’t let myself believe that he’s completely evil. If I do that, then the faith I have in the Diaspora, it’s… I just can’t, Jace. I’m not ready to do that yet.”

 

He slumps down, ignoring the chairs to sit on the floor and lean his back against the wall. They're in Jace’s private quarters on the Seventh Sun; it's barely less of a closet than the rest of the crew’s, but it's quiet and private, and there’s no Divine listening in on everything they say.

 

Jace plops himself down next to Addax and places a hesitant hand on the other man’s shoulder. He wants so desperately to scoop Addax up and hold him, comfort him, but physical contact still feels like walking a tightrope. No matter how much he wants to touch, there’s a lingering fear of overstepping boundaries, and so he keeps his hand light and tries not to think about it. Addax doesn’t lean into the touch, but he doesn't pull away either.

 

“You’re probably right.” Addax lets his breath go in a long exhale. “And I will be careful around Ibex; it would be foolish not to. But I refuse to treat him like a criminal or a monster just because of the circumstances that brought him on board.”

 

Addax looks to Jace as if waiting for a response, but all Jace can manage to do is nod his head. They sit there in silence for a while, two of the sector’s best pilots crouched on a cold floor.

 

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Jace says finally. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt, and this guy seems like he has the power to screw this all up.”

 

“I know.” Addax leans his head on Jace’s shoulder and rests it there. “I know. But we’ll keep it together.”

 

Jace laughs, careful not to jostle Addax’s head. “I can only hope.”

 

 

(4)

 

They patrol together when no one else will, when the regular troops crowd the ship bays with crossed arms and frowns, waiting without end for the provisions they deserve.

 

It’s more common for Jace to fly with Tea than it is for him to fly with Addax, or even for him to fly with Orth on the rare occasions he isn’t drowned in some other kind of work. The old Queen’s Gambit, back together when people are looking for a king. They fly together with an ease that comes with practice, with familiarity. From an outsider’s perspective, it looks almost like magic, but  Jace doesn’t need his extrasensory knowledge of machines to know to duck when Tea twists left, or to swoop down from above and swarm an enemy when Orth looks like he’s falling back. The whole stratus thing probably helps, though. Jace told him once that he could tell whether or not Tea would charge an enemy based on how happy she felt that morning. For Addax, having had only a Divine for company for most of his life, that seems more impossible than any trick maneuver.

 

With Addax it’s different. It’s quiet, even-- dare he say it, peaceful. The Divine is large enough to serve as a warning to all but the most foolish forces. Those who aren’t scared away by sheer size are caught by Peace’s radars long before they can even try to be sneaky. Addax tells Jace about those ones, watching with a smile on his face when his ship breaks into a flock like that bird in the one anime Jace made him watch, the one he got the name “Panther” from in the first place. He zips around little cargo ships filled with marauders and dives down at forces from Apostalos, pulling away within a hair’s breadth of crashing. Their comms aren’t always on, but sometimes Addax imagines that he can hear him laughing.

 

When there is nothing left to defend against, Jace perches the Panther on Peace’s shoulder. He puts on an exosuit, makes sure that his helmet is secure on his head, and leaps out of the airlock, putting his faith in Addax to catch him with Peace’s hands.

 

(It’s more trust than Addax could ever have, both in Peace and in himself. Doubts that worm their way into his brain whisper that Jace only trusts him because he knows that he could take control of Peace if Addax failed. The smile on Jace’s face when he enters the cockpit only drowns out those whispers a little bit.)

 

The hallways up to the cockpit are longer than they seem, or maybe it’s just that Peace bends the space inside itself, twisting and folding time so that a hallway is just the space where a thousand people have walked and fought and lived, each step an echo of another. Addax tries to distract Peace while Jace makes his way to him, placating the divine with conversation so that its mind drifts to the cockpit instead of dwelling in the tangles of memory. Jace is good at navigating the corridors, but even he slips sometimes. As the seconds pass, Addax becomes increasingly anxious that he’ll have to go retrieve him, an anxiety that only stops when he hears a knock on the cockpit door.

 

“Hey.” The sight of Jace in the doorway is a comfort. His hair is messy from his flight suit, his hands empty except for a small datapad. “So do you want to watch something? We still have a few episodes left of Marielda, or we could just hang out, listen to music or something.”

 

“Anime sounds good.” Addax digs around under his chair for the blankets that he keeps hidden. He gestures Jace over and scoots to the edge of his seat. There’s only one chair in the cockpit, but Peace has more space to move around in and bigger screens to watch stuff on, so it’s more comfortable than trying to squeeze the two of them into the cockpit of the Panther. Plus, it’s a big chair, he tells himself, trying to ignore how Jace’s thigh presses a hot line against his. They settle in and watch as a train flies over a city so that a crew of thieves can kill a god.

 

They spend hours in that cockpit, not saying much, just taking in each other’s company. The hours of their patrol pass quickly like this, and it seems that all too soon the alarm on Jace’s data pad is ringing to alert the end of their shift. Peace is always quicker to let Jace leave than it is to let him in, and as soon as the Panther takes off, Peace chides him for letting a potential enemy in to the place where he is most vulnerable. Addax ignores it as best he can, working out their course for the next few hours and trying not to think of the feeling of Jace’s body flush against his.

 

 

(5)

 

They take on the facility with an ease that Jace has rarely felt in battle. Normally the air swarms with signals and he has to pick and choose what to focus on, but here Peace is a dominating presence, a beacon in the chaos. It doesn’t matter that forces from all sides are massing on the horizon, or that the rest of their little kingdom is advancing on the front lines. He has a purpose in being here, and Addax will guide him to it.

 

A mech approaches and he dispatches a part of the Panther without even thinking, slicing the metal in two as he speeds past. Behind him Orth and Tea take on an Apostalisian cruiser. The building’s guns fire a volley of missiles that scream as he dodges them. Sokrates’s intel said that the device was being kept at the bottom level of the facility. He and Addax are still just above the building.

 

“I’m going to clear a path for you straight down the middle.” Addax’s voice hums electric in his ear. “There’s going to be a small window between when I fire and when they fire in response. You need to slip in then.”

 

“Gotcha.” The tension flows from Jace’s mind to his hands, tightening his fists on the controls. “Hey Addax?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I-” A fleet of drones comes in from above. “Never mind. It can wait until later.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“Yeah.” Jace smiles to himself. “When this is all over, we can get drinks like I promised, and I can tell you then.”

 

“I’ll hold you to it.” Addax takes a deep breath. “Firing in three… two… one…”

 

The shot is clean, a perfect circle through the wall.

 

It’s only afterwards that things get messy. 

  
  


 

(+1)

 

The world is warm when they see each other, the blue sky fading around them to reveal Weight hanging like a marble in the sky. The last time they met each other’s eyes was when they put it up there.

 

There is no reaching out this time, no hovering uncertainty where time seems to stand still. Instead time moves like a wave- a cresting realization giving way to a flood of joy as their eyes meet from across the square.

 

Addax is the first to move, elbowing and shouldering his way through the crowd and ignoring the grumbles in response. It doesn’t matter; they’re too focused on what Ibex has to say to care about where a former candidate is going.

 

Jace moves more slowly, still learning to use his limbs again after a decade asleep. He leans heavily on a cane, his eyes bright and his smile as beautiful as it was the last time that Addax saw him so many years ago. They meet in a tangle of limbs, each grasping the other so tight that it feels like they could be one person.

 

“I thought you were dead,” Addax says into the wild curls of Jace’s hair. “For years I couldn’t find you, and then when I finally did, I thought you would never wake up.”

 

“Sometimes it was like dying.” Jace tucks his face into Addax’s neck. “Living the same dream over and over, trying to figure out where things went wrong. It was like some kind of purgatory. At least I got to see you.”

 

Addax kisses him then, takes Jace’s face in his hands and strokes a thumb over his cheekbone as he presses their lips together. Jace kisses back, wrapping his hands around the back of Addax’s neck and letting his cane drop to the ground.

 

Around them their younger faces stand stories high on billboards and banners, advertising nationalism disguised as solidarity. Addax wonders if people would even recognize them, with his hair in tight plum braids and Jace’s tan skin turned sallow and pale. They are older, and if the lines on their faces don’t show it, then the weight that they both carry with them does. They are done being the heroes of the Golden Branch.


End file.
